Happy Landings

Sarika Nimkar, Class of 2024, is comfortable around sophisticated technology. After all, as a flight attendant for 11 years, she got to know her way around Boeing and Airbus aircraft.

But there’s one thing that worries her being back at school after over a decade: Navigating a laptop computer.

“That wasn’t something I used that much in my job,” she says with a smile.

Until April 2022, Nimkar worked as a flight attendant for Air India and several other Indian airlines, doing all the things that flight attendants do: Conducting preflight inspections. Giving safety demonstrations. Serving meals. Maintaining calm during medical emergencies and flight turbulence. And, mostly, dealing with customers—some polite, some not so much.

She’s brought that wealth of on-the-ground (or in-the-air) knowledge to Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, where she’s completing her Master of Science in Marketing (MSM).

“Suffolk was one of the only places I looked that had a marketing degree along with the customer experience concentration,” Nimkar says. “So that was a major reason I came here.” In the concentration, she’ll explore topics such as customer centricity, design thinking, consumer marketing, customer insights, and neuromarketing.

While it’s been a while since she’s been in school, Nimkar is confident that her flight attendant experience will be helpful working with fellow students. After all, a Boeing 777 has 16 crew members who have to learn to work together for a 17-hour flight and ensure the safety and happiness of more than 300 passengers. Working on a project for a client has some of the same pressures.

“If you smile, you can get through anything,” Nimkar says. “That helps...and having a lot of patience.”